1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to a desktop system that integrates an existing healthcare application with a separate document management system and, more particularly, to a system that includes an integration interface that modifies a user interface of the healthcare application and includes objects that access the document management system using information from the user interface.
2. Description of the Related Art
Healthcare workers depend on viewing patient records to complete their work. Oftentimes paper documents are used, but many organizations have made use of electronic document imaging and management. The benefits of electronic document management are great—concurrent document access, permanent storage and retrieval, workflow capabilities, etc. But a document imaging application may add to the already long list of systems that a healthcare organization might already use.
The healthcare computing environment consists of many separate and diverse systems. Frequently healthcare workers must utilize a number of different systems to complete their work. The effort needed for the worker to move between these systems has a negative impact on their productivity and widens the opportunity for errors. Effort is wasted administering and maintaining separate security profiles across these many systems.
The traditional method for implementing patient document management systems is to add a new application along side existing applications. This is not ideal. Typical systems that are added alongside existing healthcare applications are the American Management System AccountLink and RecordLink®, which provide account and record functionality for healthcare business office and medical records offices, respectively. These existing AMS systems are used side-by-side with existing healthcare applications. The LanVision ChartVision™ (see www.lanvision.com) and the MedPlus ChartMaxx™ (see www.medplus.com) are also complete document imaging systems that are run alongside other healthcare applications.
What is needed is a system that facilitates a tight integration of document management into existing healthcare applications.